Nine Irish companies have been named among the fastest growing in the European Union following a major piece of research by the 'Financial Times'.

Irish cloud computing company Asavie was the highest ranked Irish company, coming in 115th place on the FT list of Europe's 1,000 fastest growing companies.

Asavie, which is backed by 'Dragons Den' investor Barry O'Sullivan, has grown dramatically since its foundation in 2004, with revenues jumping by 901pc between 2012 and 2015.

The most recently filed accounts for Dublin based Asavie shows revenue rose to €19m in 2015, up from €9.1m. Profits doubled to €11.2m. The business has 79 staff. "This recognition of Asavie as one of Europe's fastest growing companies is a testimony to the hard work, technological innovation and the market opportunity identified for secure connectivity for the Internet of Things and next generation mobility management," Asavie CEO and founder Ralph Shaw said yesterday.

The rise in turnover has been aided by a number of strategic partnerships signed with major telecommunications companies in recent years.

Asavie now counts AT&T, Eir, Three, Telefonica and Vodafone as clients and the company recently signed deals with Dell and Amazon Web Services.

Asavie has operations in Europe, the Middle East and Asia as well as North America and has recently announced plans to expand into Singapore.

Irish tech finance company Fenergo ranked in 258th place having seen revenues grow to €18m. IT support group Agile Networks came in at 289th, despite the fact that the company remains a relatively small operation with just 18 employees.

Another Irish company on the list is the Galway based Natural Health Company (414) which was founded in January 2011 by David 'Daithi' O'Connor and Liam Salmon.

Its Revive health drink has led to growth of 220pc over the past number of years. It employs around 40 people at its Galway city base.

Synergy Security Solutions (855), also in Galway provides bespoke security solutions for business clients. With around 800 employees, Synergy's growth is one of the most large scale success stories of the Irish security sector in recent years.

Another cloud-based software provider, Crème Global, is ranked in 860th position. Lotus Automation also provides IT solutions and is ranked in 936th place. The business, better known as LotusWorks, has built up its client base over a period of three decades.

The company generates the most revenue of any Irish company on the list, calculated to be €63.8m in 2015. It is now headquartered in Massachusetts in the US and employs almost 500 people.

The overall fastest growing company in the EU was German food and beverage provider HelloFresh, according to the FT.

The company posted revenues of over €300m in 2015 and employs just under 1,000 people having been set up in 2011.

The company behind Joe.ie - Maximum Media - was ranked 250th with the FT noting that the company's revenues had jumped by 489pc since 2011. Maximum Media has recently expanded into the UK market and has secured some high profile names for its sports coverage. The company is aggressively pursuing a share of the online live TV market and runs a number of popular review shows.

Seventy-eight of the companies on the list were based in London, making the city the highest ranked in the EU for commerce and innovation. Paris was second with 45 companies, while Milan was third (34) and Berlin (32) was fourth.

Criteria for consideration in the FT rankings meant companies had to have revenues of over €1.5m at the end of 2015.